Article here. Excerpt:

'By now the rules of toxic masculinity are well-established: men must be strong above all else, they must be stoic, feelings are for the weak and violence, regardless of the question, is usually the answer.

Toxic masculinity has, in recent years, become something of a feminist punchline – mostly albeit in good faith. Exposing the stereotypes that belittle and diminish all genders is part of the dichotomy that has long formed the basis of any movement towards equality. Today, however, comments made by one prominent British figurehead about male suicide has opened up an important discussion about the role of feminism within male mental health – and how, for some, it remains dangerously misunderstood.

“Maybe other people’s feminisms are about making the world better for men,” Chidera Eggerue, aka The Slumflower, tweeted yesterday. “As for me,” she continued, “I don’t have time to think about the reasons why the system you created at my expense to benefit you is now choking you.

Article here. Jump the paywall by Googling the first paragraph.
Excerpt:

'Challen, now 65, admits to killing her husband but denies murder, arguing that she has diminished responsibility because of the physical and psychological abuse to which he subjected her.

Her attorney, Harriet Wistrich, pursued that argument by pointing to a law approved in 2015 that recognizes coercive control as a criminal offense. Notably, the statute does not require that the abuse present an imminent lethal danger, an element that has been central to the use in U.S. courts in what some call the “battered woman’s defense.”

The decision affirmed in stark terms just how terribly marital violence matters and pointed to new understanding, in the era of the #MeToo movement, that not all injuries are external. It acknowledged, Wistrich said, how abuse and belittlement make themselves invisible by winding their way into the very fabric of female experience.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Forget everything you've learned about men and Mars.

Chances are the first person to land on the red planet will be a woman, the head of NASA said recently.

Jim Bridenstine was a guest on the science and technology radio show "Science Friday," when he teased that a woman is "likely to be" the first person on Mars.

The NASA administrator did not identify a specific person, but said women are at the forefront of the agency's upcoming plans.

Bridenstine responded "absolutely" to a question from a Twitter user who asked whether women will be included in the agency's next trip to the moon.

In fact, he said the next person on the moon is also likely to be a woman.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last month, a federal judge in Texas ruled that drafting only men for military service was unconstitutional. The National Coalition for Men (NCFM), the plaintiff in the case, considers the win a step toward gender equity, but not for the reasons you might think. In a press release announcing the legal victory, the NCFM says that it considers conscription for men "an aspect of socially institutionalized male disposability." The draft, according to the NCFM, is evidence of society-wide discrimination against men.

In addition to the draft, the NCFM lists, among other things, education and family court as other areas where men are commonly discriminated against. Statistical data does not support these claims. In fact, more than 90 percent of custody cases are agreed upon by parents without court intervention—and when the courts do become involved, it's commonly because abusers are using the family court as a method of terror when they sue for custodial rights.

Article here. I include this here largely for its humor value. Excerpt:

'A feminist educator in the United Kingdom is making a point not to step aside when men walk in her direction, playing what she refers to as “patriarchy chicken.”

Dr. Charlotte Riley, a lecturer and historian of twentieth century labour party politics, managed to get her Twitter post turned into an op-ed on New Statesman America, an offshoot of the left-leaning, London-based New Statesman publication.

The idea of patriarchy chicken is as follows: by refusing to move out of the way to avoid collision with men going in the opposite direction, women are somehow empowering themselves.

“A few days ago, I was having a bad morning: my train tickets were expensive, my train was delayed, and my coffee was cold,” Riley wrote. “But I cheered myself up by playing a game on my commute. The game is called Patriarchy Chicken, and the rules are simple: do not move out of the way for men.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Spain’s Popular Party (PP) has announced it will not be attending the demonstration in Madrid for International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8. In a press release, the opposition conservative group defended its decision on the grounds that the declaration that will be read out at the march is “politicized” and “partisan.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Andrea James pleaded guilty in 2009 to four criminal counts related to a mortgage fraud.

When the time came to argue about sentencing, her attorney asked the judge to consider the fact that James’s son was just 4 months old. But the prosecutors held the high cards, and they objected. “She made the decision to have this baby at the age of 44 when facing criminal charges and a likely prison sentence,” they wrote in a memo to the judge.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Scripted television does not reflect reality as it exists. Rather, in addition to dramatizing for entertainment, the creators often also intend to create a guide to what reality should be. Television programs tell us what is cool and what is not; they tell us what is desirable and what is not. A more precise way of saying this is that television programs often have political agendas.

One of the visions offered to us through contemporary shows is that single motherhood is cool. More than that, it is desirable, because it reinforces the feminist precept that women do not need men and are better off without them. Unmarried mothers and single motherhood are normalized, even encouraged. Many TV heroines are now single mothers:
...
So almost one-third of American children do not live with a mother and father -- and of those, most live with their mothers.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Most Republican women said gender discrimination is not a serious problem in the United States, according to a new HuffPost/Yahoo/CARE survey.

Only 30 percent of Republican women polled said gender discrimination is a serious problem, compared with 74 percent of Democratic women.

“I’m not saying it never happens, but I think it’s blown out of proportion and used as an excuse,” said Melissa, a 45-year-old Republican survey respondent from Sacramento, California, who asked HuffPost not to reveal her last name because she doesn’t want her co-workers to know she voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

Similarly, only 26 percent of women who identified as Republican said unequal pay between men and women working the same jobs was a serious problem, compared with 63 percent of Democratic women.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Scott Morrison has suggested that women’s advancement should not come at the expense of men, in an address to mark International Women’s Day.

Speaking to the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in Western Australia on Friday, Morrison said the Liberal party wanted women to rise but did not “want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse”.

The prime minister’s comments echo remarks by the minister for women, Kelly O’Dwyer, at the National Press Club in November, rejecting the view that “girls doing well must mean that boys do badly”.

Morrison said O’Dwyer’s message was that “gender equality isn’t about pitting girls against boys”.

“See, we’re not about setting Australians against each other, trying to push some down to lift others up,” he said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'When voters elected the first judges to Louisville's new Jefferson District Court in 1978, only two were women.

Now, only two are men.

Women hold 32 of the 40 judgeships in Jefferson County — including 88 percent of the seats on District Court. And women have vanquished men in 15 of the last 17 head-to-head judicial races.

As District Judge Stephanie Burke, who won two of those contests, put it, male judges in Louisville "are coming pretty close to extinction."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'After Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, mainstream media outlets tried strenuously to make sense of what happened. One narrative quickly emerged: sexism. Hillary lost because Americans can’t stand women in power, we were informed. (Oddly, during the campaign we were told that, if she won, it would also usher in “the kind of down-and-dirty public misogyny you might expect from a stag party at Roger Ailes’s house,” but no matter.)

Yet no amount of media pandering to Pantsuit Nation could alter the fact that Hillary was a uniquely awful candidate. There’s a reason 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump, and it’s not because they were all gender traitors. If Americans are so sexist, why did many of them in battleground states like Pennsylvania cast their vote for a different woman, Green Party candidate Jill Stein? And if sexism unfairly hobbled Hillary, why did she manage to best Trump in the popular vote? (Alas, annoyed liberals, you still need the Electoral College to win.)

Article here. Excerpt:

'Cern has decided not to extend Professor Alessandro Strumia’s status of guest professor.

Prof Strumia told BBC News that he stood by his remarks.

"Some people hated hearing about higher male variance: this idea comes from Darwin, like other offensive ideas that got observational support," he told BBC News.

"Science is not about being offended when facts challenge ideas held as sacred".

He added that he believed that he had not been fairly treated.

"For months, Cern kept 'investigating' if my 30-minute talk might have violated Cern rules [requiring an] 'obligation to exercise reserve and tact in expressing personal opinions and communication to the public'," Prof Strumia said.

"In such a case, they would have opened some procedure, where I would have been able [to defend] myself. This never happened."

Last September, Professor Strumia stated that “physics was invented and built by men, it's not by invitation" at a presentation at the Cern the workshop.'

Article here. Wasn't Buddhism founded by a man? Hasn't it been led by men for centuries now? HHDL is losing it. Excerpt:

'The Dalai Lama said Friday that more women are needed in leadership roles because they are more compassionate than men, who are valued instead for their ability to “kill.”
“Women have been shown to be more sensitive to others’ suffering, whereas, warriors celebrated for killing their opponents are almost always men,” he tweeted in celebration of International Women’s Day celebrated on March 8.

“We need to see more women in leadership roles and more closely involved in education about compassion,” he said.

This is not the first time that the Buddhist leader has vocalized his support for female leadership, going so far as to suggest that his successor as Tibet’s spiritual leader could well be a woman.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A few years ago, I was walking near my apartment with my daughters, then 7 and 4, when an older man I recognized from the neighborhood began to talk to them. He wasn’t in any apparent way a threat, but he wasn’t a friend, either. Both of my girls are by nature slow to warm up and have a healthy dose of stranger danger.
...
For the remaining two blocks to our apartment, I told my daughters that they did exactly the right thing, that they never had to talk to someone they didn’t know, especially when that person is talking about the way they look. A conversation required them to use their voice, which is part of their body, and their bodies are theirs alone.